Watch Nowhere to Run For Free

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

In a planned escape, Sam (Jean-Claude Van Damme) makes it on down the road. Unfortunately the prison guard knows how to use a scope and his partner in crime (Anthony Starke) dies. Sam makes his way to the widow Anderson (Rosanna Arquette) farm who is being foreclosed upon by the evil banker to make room for a development. Sam helps her out.This is the Rosanna Arquette in her prime and is about two table dances away from paying off her farm and that of her neighbor. The film had about as half as many stuntmen as actors, for the short amount of time they were needed. Our protagonist is a gentleman criminal. This movie appears to be the inspiration for the chick flick "Labor Day." Guide: No F-words. Sex and nudity (Rosanna Arquette)

Despite being later copied in 1997's FIRE DOWN BELOW, this is actually one of Van Damme's lesser films from his 'classic' period. It looks like he was trying to break away from his martial arts background here into more serious acting (which obviously failed), so fans will be disappointed that there are none of those famed kicks to the head. In fact, the film is extremely slow-moving, the monotony broken up only by a few good action sequences (the barn fire coming to mind). Adding insult to injury, a good deal of the film is made up with sickly sentimentalising in the form of Rosanna Arquette, who comes across as a really poor actress here, and an obnoxious child, namely Kieran Culkin, the younger brother of Macaulay. Yes, I cheered when someone smacked his gob at the end of this film.The fight scenes, when they do come, are pretty good, but sadly they're over very quickly. The first time we see Van Damme, he's beating up his guards, which doesn't exactly endear his character to the audience, later he flashes two young children in the woods. I'm not surprised they arrested this guy. The plot about landowners using dodgy methods to get rid of the woman living on their land is nothing new, and extremely basic - you could figure out what was going to happen next with ease.The acting is okay here, but strictly of the television-movie level, with the aforementioned Arquette and Culkin going through the paces. Van Damme seems to be a little out of his depth, as if his heart wasn't really in the film, and we don't really get to know him very well. He's not at his best. Of the bad guys, Ted Levine provides a worthy opponent for Van Damme, while Joss Ackland enjoys a seedy role (almost exactly the same role as he played in LETHAL WEAPON 2). NOWHERE TO RUN is passable entertainment, but you could do a lot better.

In real life, Jean Claude Van Damme is not only a great martial arts sensation, but on the talk show circuit he is remarkably witty, charismatic and entertaining. Yet astonishingly a movie like "Nowhere to Run" does not exploit any of Jean Claude Van Damme's strengths in either area. To be sure, the plot for "Nowhere to Run" is little more than the familiar story of the stranger Sam Gillen (Jean Claude Van Damme) visiting small town America to save the home of Clydie (the sexy Rosanna Arquette) and her two children from developers, who are obviously evil because they are led by Franklin Hale (Joss Ackland) who has a strong British accent -- and one of the unwritten rules in Hollywood is that all British people in the movies are evil. Yet even if one excuses the predictable plot, surely director Robert Harmon and writers Joe Eszterhas, Robert Marquand, Leslie Bohem, and Randy Feldman could have done something to make the movie more interesting. "Nowhere to Run" has lots of action scenes, but why not have Jean Claude Van Damme perform his beautifully choreographed karate in any of them? Van Damme is also a remarkably charismatic and witty individual, but why not show that side of him by giving him more things to say and allowing him just to be himself. I was astonished to see that most of Van Damme's dialogue included one, two or three words strewn together. Could Joe Eszterhas, who is paid millions for his scripts, come up with anything better than that? Could any of the screen writers (four in all!) work together to come up with anything better? "Nowhere to Run" apparently cost $15 million to make, but its performances are on par with a low-budget Canadian film with B- or C-grade actors. And it is a great shame because Jean-Claude is probably one of the most interesting personalities to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s. He has the confidence, charisma and dynamism of a shooting star, but instead of allowing him to be himself, the producers, the writers and director hamstrung this movie sensation with terrible scripts that give him nothing to say and replace his awesome karate with brain numbing punching scenes and shoot em up scenes.There are only few saving graces in this mess. Clydie (Rosanna Arquette) has a certain sex appeal. Van Damme's line that he is the parking intendant looking out for his customers was cute. The kids were also entertaining. But for the most part, "Nowhere to Run" is a big disappointment that gratuitously wastes the acting talent.

15 years ago, a group of producers were planning a MOVIE. This MOVIE would star JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME and would be an ACTION THRILLER. Of course, because of it's PEDIGREE all original thinking would be THROWN OUT OF THE WINDOW. You see, you can never OVERESTIMATE THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE AVERAGE ACTION MOVIE FAN. They don't want myriad PLOTS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CHARACTERS. No, they want THE MUSCLES FROM BRUSSELS KICKING SOME ASS.So, they drew up a little template that would NOT ONLY FORM THE BASIS OF EVERY FUTURE VAN DAMME FLICK, but would also be COPIED BY COUNTLESS OTHER CHOP SOCKY PRODUCTIONS, especially those of the STRAIGHT TO VIDEO VARIETY. Till now, this proved formula has been A CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET. Just like the recipe of the KRABBY PATTY. Having watched Nowhere to Run though, I think I can take a pretty good stab at CRACKING THE CODE. So here it is. Sorry, studios:1. Think of a stupid title. For a start our hero can escape anytime he wants, plus he rides a restored motorcycle for half the film.. so why would he want to 'run' anywhere?2. Give Van Damme a shady past, something he's not proud of (in this case, being an escaped convict involved in bank robberies), and then halfway through have him blurt out his crime to the love of his life. She immediately rejects him, but decides he's not so bad when he redeems himself by beating up the men who are trying to kill her. As you do.3. Write in two cute kids who see Jean as a father figure, as they lost theirs due to a heart attack. They must be a boy and a girl. The girl has to carry a teddy bear everywhere and shout "MOMMY" a lot the boy has to be spunky and resourceful, even saving our hero's life at one point. Like it or not, he becomes a surrogate father to the little nippers. Bless!4. If the main protagonist does get injured in the course of all his brawling, then don't worry. Put away the medkit, because in the very next scene, the nastiest of cuts will completely disappear! It'll be like nothing happened to him! What a relief!5. The chief villain must be a old dude, wearing a posh suit and with an English accent. All throughout the movie, he has a seemingly endless stream of underlings to do his dirty work for him, but when they're reduced to rubble by The Muscles he should go completely nuts and wave a gun around. Of course this tactic also fails, and the damn Limey is arrested or killed. Phew!6. The hero's love interest should have a rival for her affections who hates him and even sides with the bad guys temporarily to get him out of the picture. He soon as he sees how ruthless these dudes are though, and comes to his senses. He even congratulates the hero on a job well done at the end as he's surrounded by dead bodies. So he was a stand-up guy after all!! 7. Have the fight over something completely worthless, like a derelict old farmhouse, that most people would quite happily sell at a profit. One lady though, ain't budging because of it's 'sentimental' value and she'll even tolerate thugs killing her cattle and threatening her life with hooks to keep this ramshackle property. It's in a way of a huge development, you see. Will Van Damme risk his life over this belligerent bint? Your bet your..8. Make full use of your setting. Because this particular film is set in a farm (see 7), in the fight scenes have Van Damme and his opponent use rakes, pitchforks and whatever else happens to be lying around as weapons. But of course, nothing beats the good old uppercut, even if it does take about 10 of them to knock the bad guys over. Hmm.. Maybe The Muscles isn't as strong as we thought.9. Don't forget The Gratuitous Shower Scene (TM). If you can squeeze in a Gratuitous Sex Scene (TM), even better.10. Put in a bunch of second rate John McClane style one-liners to try and give the hero some personality. Examples: 'Au Revior F***er' as he shoots dead an evil henchman, and "No, but I know what you are" when the Brit bad guy (See 5) asks "Do you know who I am?!" Shakespeare it ain't.So to sum it up then: a BOG STANDARD ACTION MOVIE with no bells and whistles, but plenty of Van Damme TAKING NO PRISONERS AND KICKING BUTT. You even get to see HIS at one point. Tee hee. In the pantheon to JCVD films, I would recommend STREETFIGHTER and TIMECOP above this, but if you've WATCHED EVERY OTHER ONE OF HIS CLASSICS then this might be just what the doctor ordered. A HEAD DOCTOR, anyway. Brainless fun, nothing more. 4/10 P.S This review has been especially designed for action genre fans with short attention spans. All important words have been CAPITILISED, so you can just scan through it quickly before getting back to The Last Boy Scout. Hope you appreciate it!